


For Those Anointed

by saha



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Cannibalism, Mental Health Issues, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:45:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2151234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saha/pseuds/saha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles tries to get by. He tries to live. He tries to still be himself.<br/>(Starts with the events at the very end of Outlast and continues onward. Characters and ships will be added as they appear.)</p>
<p>The men who had just tried to kill him were dead; and Miles didn't even have to open his eyes to know. The holes in his chest remained. The fingers he had lost were still gone. But it was different now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Those Anointed

**Author's Note:**

> My first fanfic for Outlast... I had originally planned this as a oneshot, but it's gotten rather out of hand. I suppose it's just speculation of what happens to Miles, the Walrider, and Waylon for what is not shown during/after the game. It's so self-indulgent I could cry. So, expect Miles and everyone else to suffer.  
> Note! There is cannibalism listed, but it is forced (dubcon?) cannibalism as Miles is an unwilling participant in it. It's also rather violent. I thought it would be right to mention it before anyone gets into the story, just in case.  
> Edit: (*yells into the sun with frustration*) There were minor errors in the transfer from my word document to AO3 that made some parts not make sense. Sorry. I think I got them all now.

_God in Heaven._

Miles heard this first, of all the sounds in the blackness. The other noises glided above him, through him. The screams, and the cries, and the slick rips of flesh.

It was all so easy, now. Whistle breath through his lungs and let the blood pump to and from his heart. Listen to the sounds of men being ripped apart from the inside out.

The men who had just tried to kill him were dead; and Miles didn’t even have to open his eyes to know. The holes in his chest remained. The fingers he had lost were still gone. But it was different now.

A final wet splatter sounded at his feet before it was only his own heartbeat left. The silence in the dark was stunning and he could only feel the prick of pins and needles spreading like nebulae across his skin.

_“Gott in Himmel_.” He had known those words, immediately. Whether it was from his deep familiarity with the English language or that one paper he had to write in high school about World War I propaganda, he didn’t remember. He recognized the German. He could taste the capitalizations on his tongue as Wernicke spoke them. Felt the sharp, horrified pull and push of breath. His, and Wernicke’s.

The quiet graced him while the still air scratched at the all holes and scrapes now a part of his body. All the open wounds. It stung, but bore no itch – and that was new.

After the hours and hours and hours and _hours_ of itch.

His eyes opened without him and they burned under the florescent light. But he knew it then, felt it shudder deep inside of his bones. Felt it deep enough that a full-teethed smile twitched out between his aching lips.

He found the static. It lived inside him.

And the static hurt. It fucking _burned_.

Miles screamed. The burning overtook him, piping though his lungs and out his open mouth. Or, at least he thought he screamed. The reality of sensations and the thoughts of them blurred and stretched within the pale static. It was the darkness that came, filled in the stuttering noise, and forced him back under the cold waves of unconsciousness. It destroyed his eyes with the salt water, blanked his mind with the dying hum. It made him wait so long just to crash ashore.

 

Sweat slid down his back underneath his clothes and made him shiver. He didn’t remember standing. Closer to the lights than before, the brightness was enough to cause him to squint in pain. As he tried to remember, to gain the feeling back in his limbs, he fell hard to the ground. His chin slapped loudly on the cold, wet floor, yet the pain fluttered like it wasn’t sure if it should let itself be felt. Miles swept out his right arm to push himself back up, but he slid under a film of liquid. It was cold and red and smelled deep and harsh. Miles had smelled it all damn night, along with piss and decay and God knew what else.

_Like putting a penny in your mouth when you were a kid_. The thought bounced around his skull, from what he had scribbled hastily hours (how many now?) before. It was blood, of course it was, but that wasn’t what bothered him. That the blood was his; that there was a cold drip of knowing that told him so – these things frightened him. The knowing licked at his nape, crawled under the skin, and wrapped wetly around his spine. He told himself that he wasn’t trembling when he brought himself up from the floor, that his hands were shaking on the thin denim across his knees was just his vision fucking over. Had to be. _Had to –_

There were bits of pale metal scattered on the floor, some crushed and others near perfect in shape. Bullets that had carved out his chest and split though his spine and crumpled at the strength of his bones. All of them coated with his cooling blood.

 So many bodies, bullets, and _I killed them, I killed them, **I killed them**. _

“To survive,” he whispered, would have spat it out if his airways didn’t feel like they were made of sand. _Proclaim the Gospel_. The Gospel of Sand – the Witness, the Apostle, the –

He shook his head.

Miles coughed dryly and tried to take thin, shuddering steps forward. Fucking hell, where was that camera? Everything was there: the horrors, the mutilations (his own, his own, his own), the death – and every bit of footage would help bring Murkoff down. Leaning against the corner near the door, he shoved himself by the hands in order to turn. There was the little fucker. Neatly draped over with – something white and bloody. He raced to the camcorder so fast that he slid across the floor on his knees. Screw the blood staining his clothes; they were getting burned after this shit. Flipping off what had to be a shoulder bone from the camera, Miles cradled the broken lens and bullet-pocked plastic.

_No, no, no, no, not after all this…_ The wretched thing had survived with him for the last two and a half years, it couldn’t screw him over now. He snapped open the screen and memory card cover with more force than was advisable, and popped out the SD card. Miles could have cried. He did cry; a small gasp of joy broke out from his mouth. It was wholly undamaged, even though the camera itself was shot to shit. Miles was suddenly very, very glad he had decided against saving everything to the camcorder’s internal memory. Everything he recorded would have been totally fucked if he did.

He slid the chip into his chest pocket with his horribly red-soaked notepad, pressed his hand to his chest, and took in his unsettled heartbeats. His eyes shut and he sighed into the quiet with what was almost contentment. He could leave, this would be over, and that would be it. Murkoff would be ruined and that would be right. He would probably get paid in damages, too. That would be nice; if it happened. Miles was just glad to be alive more than anything.

Turning back towards the doorway, uneasiness settled in him. He finally had enough lucidity to truly see the wreck of the underground hall and room. There weren’t actually any _bodies_. Only flesh, bones, firearms, and a single wheelchair knocked on its back. Wernicke. His pulse beat painfully as he let his hand slide off the pocket. There were so many holes in his shirt, he could feel them with the fingers he had left. But looking down, there were no wounds, only tender, pinkish spots beneath the buttons and ripped cloth.

It was only then he noticed the ache.

 

It couldn’t have taken more than a couple of seconds, but the darkness took up so much space in his head, flowing in night-blue gossamer over black. It felt like minutes. No other colors faded or flew within the dark – the veil that began to overtake him was there alone. An impulse of darkening blue against the inside of his skull, and the moment ended.

Voracious. It was the only word that came to mind when the dark peeled away and he was on his knees amongst the splattered mush that had once been human beings. _Voracious?_ The ache opened his mouth and pushed open his throat. It gagged him, he should have vomited, but, but – “What the _fuck,_ what the fuck?!”

Saliva dripped from his lips, and tears dropped off his cheeks when he realized what this was. _It’s like an itch._ This was wrong; impossible. His body leaned forward and he threw out his hands to stop it, the grotesque sight of his cut fingers catching him the thought of **_blood and bone_** _, blood and bone, **You need** **blood and** **bone** –_

“What the hell, _no_ –” he choked on his own words, his spit, as his body continued to force itself slowly to the floor. His voice trembled as violently as his arms, attempting to keep him afloat in this near-delusional fog. “Stop. _Stop it!_ _Fuck!”_ Miles’ mouth was pressed against a mass of unidentifiable flesh, wetting it with blood as he desperately tried to close his lips. He couldn’t even see anything anymore. There was only blood.

_“You have become the host.”_

The gasp in the back of his mind breathed, scraping the inside of his skull. Not his voice, yet so loud and painful that Miles could know it. The voice warped in his thoughts until he could no longer hear his own breath.

Walrider – the _Walrider_ , _the Walrider,_ **_the Walrider._**

It made him sick and dizzy until his vision popped small, white lights against bleeding red. There was this sound – it kept coming back now, over and over. Oh God, the static was back and it screamed in his bones.

It spoke, the voice deep and feminine and edged with white noise: 

**_eat._ **

It felt as though a hand was being placed at the crown of his head, embracing his skull, but then twisted into his hair and pushed down. Miles’ teeth caught the flesh, tough and tasting of pure blood on his tongue. But it was good, and the ache, the itch, told him so, too. As did the voice. **_eat. partake of what has been given to You. what has been offered at My altar. it is the right of who bears Me. and now that one is You._**

He choked in a dry heave, kicking slickly against the floor until he noticed his own hands at his face. They tore into the meat and pushed what it grabbed towards his mouth. **_You need blood and bone._**

There were ten fingers in full, and two were black mist.

Miles would have screamed if he wasn’t being forced to eat what was once alive, what was once just like him. It was too tough to chew, and when he tried, there was only more blood. He swallowed over and over and stained himself with tears.

The ache kept itself in waves, abating and then rising once again. The metallic taste burned on his tongue and whatever body part this was, Miles didn’t think he’d be able take it all. The hunger disgusted him and yet –

There were a number of things he physically enjoyed. The breeze that blew through his Jeep when he opened the windows; the comfort of ritual in the white-and-yellow cat that insisted on pawing on his apartment door every night until he let it in; listening to heavy rainfall on the roof under as many blankets as he could manage. These things felt right.

But none of them compared to the light-headed satisfaction that came when he devoured the gore with false fingers and forced open teeth. It curled hollowly under his bones and flooded his stomach with each rip and swallow of meat.

His jaw began to ache when he reached bone, the press and strain of his mouth being open at its widest for endless minutes. The tears left clean streaks amongst the blood and he coughed violently when he was able to drag his arms under him. He indulged himself in the comfort of stillness, if only for the moment. Comfort in the lack of dead in his teeth, and the quietly receding flow of desire. But then the ache – the itch – the _need_ – twisted and pulsed in his gut, and he flinched at his own body.

He sobbed into his fingers, skin and bones and nanites, and bit his lip until blood came and dripped to join all the rest. The gasping breaths and the short shaking of his limbs were what all that was left of whoever Miles was before this. Investigative reporter and _an idiot, a fucking idiot, why did I do this?_

He was alive, his heart pumped blood and his brain sent its impulses, but God knew he had never felt more dead. He was as helpless as a child and just as fragile – he couldn’t find the strength to lift his face from the bone.

And before Miles understood what he was doing, he leaned his lips on it and crept up a hand to grasp it. He wanted to fight it, fuck how this barely felt like his own body anymore, but it was just too late. He sucked on the bone, desperately taking the last of any blood left. It fulfilled the desire that was deeper within him than any of his organs could allow him to have felt in the first place. Any of his own organs, and the words lit in the back of his mind. _With organs I can’t imagine._

He shut his eyes and sighed out his nose with exhaustion, his grip tightening cautiously. Blackness behind his eyelids stayed still with the drops of painful red and pale green swimming through. Not a hallucination, not a dream, _then what? Then nothing._ He let his mind drift away.

It was horrible for him to grin at the thought that passed in his mind. He nearly laughed: Miles had fellated a few things in his lifetime, but _bone_ had never been one of them. _But_ _things change, don’t they._

He was disgusted with himself, and his shoulders shook at the stifled crying and laughter. The grip he held on the bone tightened further and further until it snapped under the pressure. The middle exposed and his eyes open, Miles’ teeth dug into the marrow and tore. It was softer than he expected and somewhat less difficult to chew than the flesh, but he was sure he couldn’t do much more of this. If this is what he was to be reduced to for the rest of his life, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to keep on living.

Shards of bone sat smashed into his right palm. Piece by piece, they pushed away from his skin as the blood clotted and his skin healed. It flicked an electric pain up his arm, but the relief of satisfying the itch overcame it.

**_they come. stand._ **

Miles lifted his head, vision filmed over with tears and struck tight with blood. There was an echo, far but spinning closer down the hall from behind the closed doors ahead of him. He wanted to let them take him. He was desperate for it.

**_no. You will stand and You will live. now._ **

 His legs and arms stuttered into action, not under Miles’ control. The Walrider must have misjudged the power used because he was jerked hard sideways and thrown to the wall behind the security desk. Stars shattered inside of his brain and he felt the slip of a hand come away from his jacket. The Walrider stood before him. Miles only had eight fingers again.

It almost didn’t look imposing anymore, even with Miles slouched against the wall while on his ass, legs thrown apart. A strange emotion bubbled up as he tilted his face to see the Walrider clearly. It was almost like joy, a lot like pain, and sat firmly within fascination. His lungs did not allow him the laugh that grew inside him, so he smiled with blood-soaked teeth.

Miles was there and he wasn’t and the voices got closer. Shouts of minor confusion and hushed words of direction. Static on a radio – “All teams authorized for deadly force. Repeat, all teams deadly force. Kill anything that moves.”

_Just don’t move, then._ The laughter bubbled up again, silent.

“Damn. Everything?” A guard or a hired gun spoke, but it didn’t matter to Miles anymore. The clatter of tactical gear echoed and the Walrider drifted towards the door.

He wanted this to be over. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to be free.

“Shut it!” A hissed shout, so close to the doors now. He let his head drop to his chest again. Knowledge swarmed him, blanketing his vision in night-blue as if it were grace and solace. For one moment, all was quiet. It broke the silence.

**_they will harm You._ **

_I figured that out, asshole._

Miles still couldn’t see, but he was grateful. He didn’t want to witness any more of the Walrider’s strength. He knew it well enough. But it felt so dark and lonely here.

**_I will not allow that to occur. for in this world there is only You and I._ **

Miles didn’t have a moment to question it. The doors flung open.

Footsteps, a gasp and – “Multiple officers down in sub basement!”

There were only two. A younger man, recently engaged and still desperate to pay off college loans. An older man, divorced twice and had never done anything in the way of a career that was out of the military. And they were both going to die. He knew.

The Walrider let itself be known. Let them feel their fear as if it fed on it. But Miles was too numb to care.

A splattering succession of gunshots and “Unknown –”

“Back up!” 

“– assailant. We need EVAC –”

“We need help!”

“– and paramedics.”

“Basement Laboratory. Some… Some THING _…”_

“No. God.”

The sick screams of men and the high, sweet pitch of the Walrider’s wail resounded in his ears. He couldn’t see. He didn’t want to see. _Let it be over. Please, God, let it be over._

There was static under the choked yelps: thin, clear phrases that rang in his bones.

“Copy that. Incoming.”

“We’re coming. Hold on.”

Miles stood up with broken will and stunted breath and vision stained black and blue. The wall held him up, and then the Walrider took its place. They walked his legs forward towards the open doors.

**_We will leave. You will have Your freedom._ **

It felt so, so long ago when he wrote it:

_Whether I escape or die here, I am free._

But Miles knew that wasn’t true. It never would be.

Not anymore.


End file.
